


Here I Stand Again, Here I Fall Again

by ghostgay23



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Other, Regeneration Angst (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28480149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostgay23/pseuds/ghostgay23
Summary: The Doctor finds herself alone and about to regenerate, but is she as alone as she thinks? A hypothetical lead-in to the regeneration of the Thirteenth Doctor.
Kudos: 7





	Here I Stand Again, Here I Fall Again

**Author's Note:**

> This is a thing I thought of as a ‘what if I was the showrunner and had the opportunity to write a regeneration?’.

The TARDIS was dark, silent and cold as she staggered through the doors from its smaller exterior. Grasping for a pillar to steady herself as her body shuddered with pain, The Doctor caught a glimpse of herself in the control screen on the central console. Her blonde hair was matted, and her fringe stuck to her clammy forehead. Her left eyebrow sported a nasty gash, caused at some point by the exertion of the battle she had been in, the blood congealed into a dark mass, stray hairs caught up in it. Her eyes were dark, shimmering pools of sorrow.

‘After everything, here I am again.’ The Doctor muttered to herself, despair cracking her tired voice. ‘About to regenerate, all alone again.’

It hadn’t always been like this. The Doctor could remember previous lifetimes, where the trauma of regeneration had been soothed by the presence of beloved companions. She recalled a previous regeneration where The Doctor had had to absorb the energy of the Time Vortex itself, all to save a blonde girl from a council estate in London. The girl had gone above and beyond anything The Doctor could have foreseen to pilot the TARDIS into the heart of a hopeless war, and the girl had reduced the might of a Dalek Empire to atoms with a wave of her hand.

The Doctor had taken away the pain that the Time Vortex was reaping on the girl, dying in the process. Then the familiar blaze of golden energy had renewed The Doctor, and the girl had saved them again, taking charge of facing a threat to the planet Earth from the hostile Sycorax.

There had been other lifetimes where The Doctor’s wonderful, beautiful companions had eased the change from one life to another. Sarah-Jane Smith and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, responding to the sight of the Time Lord collapsing to the floor, weakened by the recent regeneration that had occurred. Even in the instances where it had been challenging, The Doctor’s friends had rallied eventually, like Ben Jackson pushing past his conviction that the new Doctor was an impostor to come around to being one of the Time Lord’s most staunch defenders.

Then there was the time that The Doctor had stepped out of the TARDIS into an unfamiliar alleyway only to get caught in the crossfire of gang warfare, being gunned down before even getting to speak. That had not been a fine death, with the efforts of Earth surgeons running into the unfortunate complications of an unfamiliarity with Time Lord physiology. Still, things had worked out fine in the end, as they more often that not had, with The Doctor going forward in a new body with a renewed enthusiasm and faith in the universe.

How The Doctor wished that Sarah-Jane or the Brig, could have been there with her now, as she felt her heartbeats skitter falteringly.

How she wished it could have been like her latest regeneration, where resistance to accept going on had ended up bringing one last chance to see the previous Doctor’s travelling companions, Nardole and Bill. How The Doctor had been so proud of Bill and Nardole, and how thrilled The Doctor had been to see a version of Bill had survived the horrors that the Master and the Cybermen had subjected her to. The reunion of these dear friends had given the previous Doctor a renewed hope to carry on, to go around one last time.

Now she just stood, cold and alone, every bone in her body aching as though her body was grieving its own forthcoming demise. A single tear danced down her face, and as she looked at her hands she could see the familiar glow of regeneration energy beginning to pulsate.

‘I don’t want to do this alone, not again’.

The confession felt as though it had escaped her lips before she realised she had even thought it.

A second voice cut through the dark chill of the TARDIS console room.

‘Alone, my dear? No, no, no. I thought I’d have understood by now, or at least remembered?’

The voice was one The Doctor recognised instantly. Even with the confusion about her life The Master’s revelations of the Timeless Child had brought, The Doctor categorised this one as being The First. The one she felt sure was her first lifetime. A wiry older male, with a tough exterior but undeniable hearts of gold underneath. There was no physical source of the voice present, it merely seemed to have called out around the console room.

‘Come now, she’s clearly going through a great deal of emotional upset.’

This was the one she called The Second. Her hearts ached as she thought of how things had ended for this incarnation, forcefully separated from his companions, pushed into regenerating against his will to live in a period of exile on Earth.

Still there was no physical form to accompany the voice, so The Doctor reasoned that it was just going to be this way.

‘Perhaps a nice drink might ease you into the change to come? Do you still have a little bar room down the corridor? Me and Liz used to dip into the reserves in there every now and then after a particularly rough day.’

Ah, The Third was here now too. A much more physical life than the ones that had come before, The Third was one The Doctor often thought fondly of when her mind drifted to the past (it was definitely her past, she was sure of that at least). Stuck on Earth and working with UNIT, this was when The Doctor felt she had most settled into having roots on Earth, another place to consider a home after being cast out from Gallifrey. Smiling gently in spite of herself, The Doctor felt compelled to respond.

‘I think it’s still floating around somewhere, Graham used to wander off sometimes and return with a little glass of rum.’

It always reminded him of Grace, The Doctor thought to herself with a sadness. Poor Grace. Another life that had been lost as a result of coming into contact with The Doctor.

‘Ah, I like the sound of him. Always wise to have a little time to unwind after a big adventure. Not too much time, mind you, otherwise one can get a bit distracted by brooding.’

The Fourth. Thinking of that time, The Doctor felt a quiet warmth colour her face. Those beautiful scarves, the feeling of freedom to be exploring such new places after the Third had spent what seemed like forever trying to get the TARDIS running again. So much felt so beautiful, even with the horrors they had faced.

‘Why are you all here? What’s happening?’

The Doctor spoke, feeling an odd sense of embarrassment now to be speaking to herself. _Her selves? Themselves?_ Why she felt this, she was not sure, talking to herself had always been a useful tool to get through things.

Maybe it was being close to death, surrounded by those lives that had gone before.

‘It feels to us that you need a bit of support now, Doctor. We don’t want you to feel you’re doing this alone again.’

The Fifth. A youthful energy, even as things had felt as though they were getting tougher. The Cybermen had cost the life of one companion, and things seemed to be getting more and more violent. By the end for this life, it had been an act of sacrifice to save the life of the last travelling companion of the Fifth that had necessitated the change, and somewhere within, The Doctor felt it had felt like a fitting end.

‘Don’t feel like you’re on trial again, either. We’re not here to pass judgment on you.’

The Doctor scoffed as the voice of The Sixth echoed around the console room. That had been a miserable time, full of deception and betrayal. Still, it hadn’t been all bad, even with the wardrobe choices that even now she found a bit of a strong choice in hindsight.

‘He’s right you know, we’re just worried for you going through it alone.’

The Seventh’s voice rang out, echoing around the pillars of the console room. If The Sixth had been on trial for conduct, it was truly for The Seventh that the past seemed to be catching up with The Doctor in a big way. Time Lord mythology and the secrets of the universe itself unfurling and revealing themselves in ways which now, looking back, almost seemed like omens of what was to come. The first rumblings of the looming Time War.

‘You could always go to the Sisters of Karn again, we’d be happy to stay with you until it’s done?’

The voice of The Eighth was softer than the previous, more thoughtful and delicate. It felt especially wrong to The Doctor that this was one of the past lives that got so thoroughly entrenched in the Time War, that saw the horrors and abominations, the acts of cruelty and unspeakable war crimes committed by Daleks and Time Lords alike. _He was so unsuited to war…_

As The Doctor thought, another voice spoke out, scratchy and quieter than the others, as though it felt ashamed to be present.

This one didn’t have a fixed number in the Doctor’s attempts to categorise the lives she felt sure had gone before, if pressed she would have classed him as The One Between The Eighth and The Ninth.

‘You can get past this, I know it doesn’t seem like it at the moment. But you can fight on.’

A life completely spent in the brutality and unstoppable grief of the Time War. Still, there he was, willing her to press forward, to take another lifetime. To accept the coming regeneration.

‘He’s right, you know. This all seems too much, I get it. But you, you can go on and do it again. Be… _fantastic_.’

If The Doctor could have seen the face behind the voice, she was certain she’d have seen The Ninth’s face, so often lost in a frown, crack into a dazzling smile with the last of those words.

As she listened, a painful jolt of pain wracked her body, sending her stumbling towards the console. Slamming her hands down on it to steady herself, The Doctor willed herself to be brave.

They’d all done it and survived, going on to live and travel and experience so much.

_She could do it too._

‘I resisted it too, remember? I cried a lot, even after checking to see where all our friends were and how they were doing.’

The one she called The Tenth spoke and she closed her eyes, remembering the agony of the radiation coursing through their body, staggering through the snow on an empty street in the darkness, back to the sanctuary of the TARDIS, just as she had now staggered from the battlefield through those doors into her beautiful ghost monument.

‘Yeah, we’ve definitely become more resistant to change, haven’t we?’

The Eleventh’s voice was full of a chuckle but with it there was a warm understanding. They were all her, they all knew what she was going through.

‘I feel like I might have held it off longer than any of you, if we’re being completely candid.’

The one that had gone before her, The Twelfth spoke. There was a gentle murmur of laughter from the voices of those that had gone before him, as though they all knew this.

‘You _can_ do it though. We can do it again.’

The Twelfth spoke again, soft. The voice sounded as though there was a tear in the eye of the face that had spoken it.

‘Just think, if you don’t, will you ever be happy knowing you didn’t get to the bottom of where I fit in?’

This voice, another woman’s, was one that The Doctor thought of a lot. Ever since the Judoon had sealed the city of Gloucester off to identify the fugitive disguised as a tour guide, where this Doctor fit in was something that had been on The Doctor’s mind. There was that gnaw of curiosity, coupled with the knowledge that This Doctor was right.

‘You’ve got me there; I’ll give you that.’

The air felt soothing, warmer suddenly after the current Doctor uttered those words. It was as though those that had gone before, had fallen before, knew there was a future after all. The Doctor spoke again, gently, eyes closed.

‘Stay with me, please? I’ll do it if you stay with me.’

She felt like a child, begging for compassion, but found herself greeted by a warm murmur of agreement from the assembled voices. There was a gentle whir as the console lit up, bathing the room in gentle golden light, and the magnificent whir of the TARDIS in motion began. Her face must have betrayed the surprise she felt at this sudden activity, for The Twelfth spoke, gently chuckling.

‘Take it from someone who knows, best to get the TARDIS going before we start the regeneration, this time.’

‘Where are we going?’

The Doctor spoke, unsure where to direct her gaze. She felt vaguely as though the voices of the Doctor’s had now formed a perfect ring around the edge of the console room.

‘Same as ever, one should imagine, exactly where we need to be.’ The First spoke, as the lights in the console switched from gold to blue.

They were nearing a place to land.

Addressing the room, The Doctor spoke again.

‘Thank you for being here. Wish me luck?’

A cacophony of voices called out in response, all of those that had addressed her, but also murmurs and whispers, snatched echoes of voices she did not yet recognise.

_More past lives? Or futures?_

The thought was lost as The Doctor was bathed in the fiery glow of regeneration energy, covering her entire form in light.

The journey would begin again.


End file.
